By Kennedy Maize
The Heritage Foundation’s 922-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project) prominently includes political prescription for various energy and environmental reforms in the U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and Environmental Protection Agency.
While Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the document, it is virtually certain that if elected, he would move swiftly to try to implement the blueprint. Many of its authors were his appointees in his administration and likely would lead his government beginning in 2025.
The Heritage project for the Interior Department programs and policies is back to the future. Essentially, the chapter wants to erase the Biden administration’s policies and actions, many of which replaced Trump administration policies.
After describing the roles of the far-reaching agency, the chapter lays out its goal:
Given the dire adverse national impact of Biden’s war on fossil fuels, no other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons, much of which is yet to be discovered.
William Pendley
The author of the chapter, William Perry Pendley, 79, was a chief architect of some of the Trump administration’s Interior Department activities, which often themselves overrode actions by prior Democratic and Republican administrations.
After law school, Pendley joined the new conservative “public service” Mountain States Legal Foundation, founded by fellow Cowboy State native James Gaius Watt (1938–2023). The foundation was a leading advocate of the Sagebrush Rebellion, a movement to turn over federal lands to local ownership.
When Ronald Regan named Watt as his first Interior secretary, Pendley became Watt’s deputy assistant secretary for energy and minerals. He was forced out as a result of the department selling Powder River Basin coal leases at rock-bottom prices after the agency’s minimum bids had been leaked to the coal industry. The scandal also resulted in Watt’s defenestration after he bragged that the panel he appointed to dissect the lease sale was balanced because it consisted of “a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.”
Pendley again ran into trouble in the Trump administration where he was Interior’s Bureau Land Management deputy director and named acting director in 2019. As acting director, he ordered most of the BLM’s Washington-based workforce to relocate to Grand Junction, Colo. The Interior secretary extended Pendley’s “acting” status repeatedly, avoid Senate confirmation, which he likely would have lost, as had five Trump nominations since 2017. In Sept. 2020 a federal judge in Montana ruled that Pendley “has served and continues to serve unlawfully as the Acting B.L.M. director.” The ruling became moot when Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Among the notable 2025 Heritage recommendations related to energy:
- A “new Administration must immediately roll back Biden’s orders, reinstate the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda, rescind Secretarial Order (SO) 3398, and review all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and similar agency actions made in compliance with that order…. The April 2021 order by Biden Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, titled ‘Revocation of Secretary’s Orders Inconsistent with Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis,’ rolled back much of Trumps’ overturning previous DOI policies and practices.”
- “Review all resource management plans finalized in the previous four years and, when necessary, select studied alternatives to restore the multi-use concept enshrined in FLPMA and to eliminate management decisions that advance the [climate policy] 30 by 30 agenda.”
- Conclude the programmatic review of the coal leasing program, and work with the congressional delegations and governors of Wyoming and Montana to restart the program immediately.”
- In one of the longest sections in the chapter, labeled IMMEDIATE ACTIONS, “BLM headquarters belongs in the American West. After all, the overwhelming majority of the 245 million surface acres (10 percent of the nation’s landmass) managed by the agency lies in the 11 western states and Alaska: A mere 50,000 surface acres lie elsewhere. Moreover, 97 percent of BLM employees are located in the American West.” Pendley’s initiative to move BLM to Grand Junction “was the epitome of good governance….”
- “Reinstate the 2020 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by secretarial order and lift the suspension of the leases.”
- Congress never intended for the National Environmental Policy Act to grow into the tree-killing, project-dooming, decade-spanning monstrosity that it has become….The Trump Administration adopted common-sense NEPA reform that must be restored immediately.”
- “Relocate the [Office of Surface Mining] Reclamation and Enforcement headquarters to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to recognize that the agency is field-driven and should be headquartered in the coal field. Reduce the number of field coal-reclamation inspectors to recognize the industry is smaller. Reissue Trump’s Schedule F executive order to permit discharge of nonperforming employees.”
- In an “American Indians and U.S. Trust Responsibility” section, the report says, “End federal mandates and subsidies of electric vehicles.” The rationale for this broad recommendation? EVs, “because of their remote locations, the absence of increased electricity demands for charging electric vehicles nearby, and the distances to be traveled, are not a choice for Indian communities.”
Reform is in the air. Expect major changes should Trump be elected come November, as with energy and the environment otherwise.
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Kennedy Maize blogs at The Quad Report, from which this post was adapted. Maize has been a Washington-based journalist covering energy and environmental topics for more than 40 years.
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Project 2025 is a wish list by The Heritage Foundation, some of whose opinions Donald Trump shares. But the Democrats want to strawman it as a policy statement by Trump, which it was not.
It would be like taking a policy statement from 350.Org and claiming it is identical with Kamala Harris’ energy policy. That is probably closer to the truth than Trump totally endorsing Project 2025.
Sure, but almost everything listed here is common sense.
The first I heard of Project 2025 was the Left accusing Trump in the press that it was his plan.
Never heard them say what exactly is wrong with it beyond “It’s from The (evil) Heritage Foundation!”.
Trump said he had nothing to do with it’s formation.
I think the first time he responded to the “accusation” he said he’d never seen it. No reason not to believe him.
(But I do hope he uses it as a guideline!)
PS This is the first time I saw what it actually was.
If it’s anti-Communist–I’m for it!!!
Too bad you have no idea what communism is.
I do. I lived under it, you first world born and raised champagne commie.
Get a load of this dude: he thinks he knows how it is to live under commies. He thinks he will be designing new dresses for the Revolutionary Army, while in reality he will be the second on the list to face the wall.
Communism is the worst type of dystopia. It’s what the Regime, right now trying to become in part.
Obviously not pure commie since it completely kills any innovation (and they do need it). It will be, according to their plans a marriage of all -isms from the 20th century with a complete control via the technology.
You are the one who can understand the midwit tier Marx’s musings cause you don’t know what logic is, so it doesn’t bother you when it doesn’t exist, and that’s why you know, for a fact what REAL communism is.
Let me guess? I has never been truly tried and you, the titan of intellect, can try it and make it a sucess?
On the internet everyone can be anything. And again, if you really think democrats are communist, or even close to it, you have no idea what communism is.
I’ve just finished touring ex-communist eastern European countries … they still struggling with the damage of communism.
Tell us all what you think communism is.
Communism is an illusion. It promises equality, but equality means lowering expectations and prosperity so that everyone except the ruling class is equally deprived. It is an oligarchy overseeing sub-mediocrity because there is no incentive to achieve. The only incentive is to exploit petty authority and meager allocations of resources, and invariably, the system eliminates large numbers of undesirable citizenry.
He never read Animal Farm.
I doubt he ever read anything that requires an attention span of greater than five minutes.
I was born in 1951and while I have always been in the United States, I have seen the damage it has done to other countries. The United States has fought against it in our own boarders but you can see the hidden history of it in “I am the Change Barack Obama and the future of liberalism” by Charles R Kesler. We are still living with the damage they have done in the form of the National Debt and the restrictions placed on our freedom. If you don’t want to pay for an education, you could also read for free “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression”. It documents the 100,000,000 death and counting resulting from Communism.
The “anti” prefix should perhaps be avoided, since in current parlance it generally describes the opposite, for instance, anti-fascists are pure fascists, and anti-racist is institutionalized racism. Then there is the accusation of anti-science, which is used to denounce anyone who dares to question the official dogma.
Fair point.
Maybe because you never looked it up?
https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
Sure, except it happened right in front of him. So either he’s stupid, has no idea what any of his staff does or he’s simply lying.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html
Funny how the left talks about Project 2025 as if it’s Mein Kamp. I’ve seen lefties quote some of it- as if it’s horrible- as if they’re enlightening people to the horrors of what Trump might do, yet many people like what’s in there and it ain’t Mein Kamp. No doubt Trump hasn’t read it- he doesn’t read stuff. But he listens to people. That’s his style.
Mein Kampf had many good things in it too. I actually read it to have an idea of what I’m talking about. It was socialist in nature and advocated for a huge government in itsworst parts though.
It’s Mao’s red book that was pure idiocy only, and if the leftists were smart they would use that.
But I agree with you: today if you are not on board with the woke cult you are Hitler, a devil incarnate.
I don’t have the time to read Project 2025 but all the excerpts I see are usually good ideas for reform.
I’m one of the “abolish 95% of the government” types so they simply don’t go far enough for me.
Please enlighten us about the good parts.
If Hit*ler had gotten into that art school in Vienna, after WWI, he may have just been a local artist, drawing flowers and buildings and grown old hurting nobody. Some of his drawings were pretty good.
I read “Mein Kamp” in high school. My mother saw it and thought I was becoming a N*zi. I read it out of interest- to learn what a significant person in history thought. I also read “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” while a high school freshman in ’64. The author lived a few miles away from me, in Lenox, MA. I think it’s 1,400 pages. Carrying that tome around the school, I thought it would impress the chicks. It didn’t. 🙂 In the ’80s, I read Mao’s book- and it reminded me so much of the state of MA bureaucracy. They published a booklet on forestry “best mgt. practices” which looked just like Mao’s book from a distance. So I photographed both side by side and passed it around. The private sector forestry people liked it- the state people didn’t. One of my many wars with the state forestry agencies.
If nothing else (no matter what your ideology), read the introductory parts. A very good summation of how the various branches ACTUALLY work – and the significant power of positions in them that the public NEVER hears about.
Mein Kampf. In the original “he’s worse than Hilter” derangement, late 1970s vintage Democrats accused Reagan, of all people, of planning to implement parts of Mein Kampf.
Perhaps read the actual document, rather than the propaganda versions?
I find this statement absolutely hillarious. He should have become a comedian too.
Everybody says stupid things- but shouldn’t be defenestrated for it.
In part he was before his time; but he also missed some current norms by a long ways.
*Jews don’t really count (and are now even considered as negatives or simply neutral.
*Cripples are pretty much neutral, with respect bonus points (unless they are representing cripple issues … then they are worth big points)
*’Black’ & ‘woman’ are meaningless. You need to have the right kind of black & the right kind of woman to recieve credit.
I will be voting for Donald Trump with no reservations whatsoever. However, there is a general consensus of opinion in the area where I live that the fix is already in for the November election and that it is 100% certain Kamala Harris will be installed as president in January 2025.
The federal government hasn’t gone nearly as far as it could go in pushing an anti-carbon agenda, if it really got serious about it. If Kamala Harris does indeed become president, WUWT’s readership must be prepared for a doubling down of the current administration’s anti-carbon policies.
I’m 100% certain Trump will win, bigly.
November will show how wrong you are, bigly.
Wanna bet $20 on it?
It would take 4,000 mules this time.
Many parts of 2025 will be enacted because there isn’t any real alternative to making the people who spend public money live with the public. That our present course is more obviously unsustainable with each passing year seems pretty clear to me. We cannot afford to build a progressively (and Progressively) larger imperial district in the East which is utterly unaccountable to taxpayers and voters and which sends money on quixotic adventures in hundred billion dollar tranches. Some overseas and some into the pockets of well connect rent seekers. The reason that 88 billionaires have endorsed Kamala for President, the most empty and preposterous candidate of all time, is that she poses no threat to the present course which they profit from.
Thirty-five trillion in debt and growing.
I have not read the thing, but from what I have seen it is mostly common sense things largely to do with holding the government accountable to the people and respecting the principles that freedom and general prosperity require. Responsibility and accountability are anathema to the elite who have taken over both branches of the Party.